Liveblogging From Yahoo’s "Open House": Open Ads, Open Mobile, Open Open!

BoomTown is thinking of starting a drinking game wherein the group gathered at Yahoo’s “Open House” media event this morning takes a shot of Cuervo every time an exec says “open.”

Except, everyone would be drunker than drunk by now if that was the case, as Yahoo lays out strategies to open its platform and all its products to the whole wide world.

That would be developers, publishers, advertisers, content creators and my mother.

OK, not her, since she cannot turn on a computer. But definitely everyone else.

As Yahoo U.S. VP Hilary Schneider noted, the main benefit for Yahoo (YHOO) ad clients of Yahoo becoming more open and allowing them to buy and target ads more easily: “It’s more access, better [return on investment], and it gives the advertiser a better experience.”

It’s also easier. “What an advertiser wants to do is reach target consumers, and they want to do it without working with a lot of different silos,” she said.

While Schneider (pictured here) was not specific in any substantive way–more to come next month, apparently–about what that ad system eventually looks like, streamlining and automating Yahoo’s often confusing ad process is critical to improved financial results.

She also skittered rather quickly through any specifics about the company’s controversial Google (GOOG) deal, in which Yahoo is outsourcing some of its search-ad business, making it sound peachy-keen for advertisers and not scary in any way.

Next up was Connected Life EVP Marco Boerries, who had not been expected to present, to talk about Yahoo’s mobile strategy.

“Open for us in mobile is not only a strategy, but a necessity,” said Boerries (pictured here), who also showed off a more open mobile home page that users could customize in any way.

He also talked about more openness for Yahoo’s Blueprint mobile development platform, which lets third-party developers create standalone applications, as well as its oneConnect, which debuted yesterday.

Yahoo has described the service as an “evolutionary new social address book that brings together a user’s circle of friends, their lives and all the ways they communicate into one seamless, easy-to-use application.”

Essentially, it is a social-networking aggregation play, which is a good thing to do given that Yahoo does not have a true social-networking play.

Next up: Video of demos!